EDITORIAL: Nevada gets poor grades when it comes to transparency and civil forfeiture

As if there weren’t enough problems with the concept of civil forfeiture, there’s now evidence that Nevada law enforcement agencies are far less than transparent about the loot they reap through the tactic.

On Tuesday, the Institute for Justice released a report grading all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. departments of Justice and the Treasury on six basic elements of transparency and accountability in their forfeiture programs. Nevada was found to have transparency laws that “leave legislators and the public in the dark about how forfeiture is being used and make it impossible to hold law enforcement accountable.”

And that’s not by accident. Obfuscation runs rampant in government agencies at all levels. It’s a feature, not a bug.

In the case of civil asset forfeiture — in which the authorities can take everything from cash to vehicles to jewelry, even a house, without charging you with a crime, let alone gaining a conviction — Nevada got a transparency report card that would embarrass Beavis and Butt-head: Two F’s, a D, a C- and a C, to go with just one A.

The state earned an F in arguably the two elements most of public interest: accounting for forfeiture fund spending, and financial audits of forfeiture accounts.

“Nevada’s failure to account for spending from forfeiture funds is particularly troubling,” said Jennifer McDonald, an IJ research analyst and co-author of the report. “With forfeiture, law enforcement agencies can keep some or all of the proceeds from the property they take. This enables them to generate and spend funds outside the normal appropriations process, which undermines the Legislature’s power of the purse. At a bare minimum, agencies should have to publicly report how they spend forfeiture proceeds.”

Nevada rated a D on penalties for failure to file a report; a C- for tracking seized property (that’s got to be comforting to those who wrongly have their assets seized); and a C for statewide forfeiture reports. The lone A was for accessibility of forfeiture records, but with such dismal grades in every other element, how good are those records, accessible or not?

The Institute for Justice made three general recommendations: require agencies to carefully track the property they seize; monitor spending from forfeiture accounts and subject those accounts to routine audits; and compile regular statewide reports detailing forfeiture activity and spending, making those reports easily available online.

Beyond that, the state Legislature needs to revisit the original version of Senate Bill 138 from the 2015 session, which would have eliminated civil forfeiture in Nevada and directed all proceeds to the general fund, instead of to the police agencies involved. What ultimately passed was a completely diluted version of the original.

The ultimate objective should be to demand a criminal conviction before prosecutors can complete any forfeiture proceedings. You know, innocent until proven guilty. It’s not just a catchy slogan. It’s the standard upon which this country’s justice system is built.